What is LINCOMM?
LINCOMM is short for Linux Community Servers — a small group of shared, powerful computers that researchers in Agricultural and Applied Economics (AAE) can use to run statistical analyses. This page explains what they are and what they're for, so you can decide whether LINCOMM fits your work and where to start.
What LINCOMM is for
Your own laptop or desktop is fine for most day-to-day analysis. But some jobs are too big for it — they need more memory than your computer has, or they run for hours or days, or they would tie up your machine so you can't use it for anything else.
LINCOMM exists for exactly those jobs. The servers have far more memory than a personal computer (377 GB each), and because they run on their own, you can start a long analysis and walk away — even shut your laptop — while it keeps working. When it's done, you collect your results.
What you can run on it
LINCOMM is built for statistical and data analysis work. It runs the tools AAE researchers use most:
- R
- Stata
- Python
You work through a text-based command line rather than a point-and-click desktop. If that's new to you, it's very learnable, and the documentation linked below walks you through it from the beginning.
How it's put together
A few basics will help the rest of the documentation make sense:
- Three nodes. LINCOMM is made up of three servers, called
lincomm-node01,lincomm-node02, andlincomm-node03. You connect directly to one of them. A web page at https://lincomm.aae.wisc.edu shows you which is least busy. - Shared, but fair. Many people use LINCOMM at once, so each node divides its processing power and memory fairly among the people signed in. That keeps any single job from crowding out everyone else's.
- Shared storage. Your files live on the AAE file share, which both LINCOMM and your own computer can reach. You don't copy data back and forth — the same files are available in both places.
- Your campus login. You sign in with your UW–Madison NetID, the same identity you use for other campus services.
How a typical project flows
A common way to work is to develop and test your analysis on your own computer using a small sample of your data, then run the full job on LINCOMM against the complete dataset. Because your files sit on the shared file share and your code uses portable paths, the same script runs in both places without changes. You get the comfort of your own machine for writing code and the muscle of LINCOMM for the heavy lifting.
Who can use it
LINCOMM is for AAE faculty, researchers, and graduate students. Access uses your NetID, and your research group's shared data lives on the AAE File Share or Research Drive that the whole group can reach from the servers.
Where to go next
Pick the starting point that matches where you are:
- New to LINCOMM and ready to log in? Start with How to get connected to LINCOMM.
- New to the command line? Work through Get started with the LINCOMM command line.
- Used the old LINCOMM before? See What's changed in LINCOMM 2.0 for what's different.
- Planning a long job? Read Keep work running with tmux and How to run and manage jobs on LINCOMM.